I've got my first complaint. Done about a dozen weddings, some free and some paid. I do it as extra income. Anyway, I take a gig for a low £200 couple of hours. Lovely couple and family. Second marriage. I tell them afterwards that it'll be 3 weeks from the ceremony before they get the pictures which will be about tomorrow. Still a couple to edit. Agreed number to deliver was originally 200. The husbands words to me were "Take your time." Wednesday I get a phone call from the wife asking when pics will be ready. I tell her I said 3 weeks. I agree to post a few on Facebook which I did last night. So today I get this Facebook message:

Thanks Colin but I seriously hope you have better photos than the ones you have put on the facebook page? Not happy with the quality, I actually feel like a 70 year old bride. I am hoping that there are a few family ones as well. Can you let me know how many we will be receiving and will this be on a disk or a memory stick? Thanks. Sorry if it seems like i am being "Picky" but I have received several which were taken on mobile by friends and they seem to be a lot better.

My first complaint. And it's shook me. So I thought I'd post a few here for advice. Room was covered in white shiny upvc panels, and the lights in ceiling caused uneven lighting on walls. What should I do? Anything I can do in PP to make her younger? They're all Raw shots. Or are they angling for a refund? They've not asked for one. I answered saying 2-300 shots on dvd and her reply was "Great Thanks." More images below.

I think the first photo of the bride looks the "oldest". I dunno....you have to ask yourself how much editing you want to do. Of the ones you've posted, the first and fourth look the most "old" for the bride. IMO, it's going to be hard because they're apparently expecting something not within their price range. I think you should select the pics that are the most flattering.

Smiling a lot shows up wrinkles, it's her wedding so she's smiling a lot, and theres lots of direct light which makes wrinkles stand out, b&w is great for showing 'texture' as well. You can only shoot what you see, unless she wants to spend a fortune on lighting and pp. If that's an extra service you provide great, charge more, if not, I'd make that clear in the contract before hand to cover yourself. Alas posting the pics on here may not be the best move, imagine if she saw it? I'd stick to text...

5DIII, 40D, 16-35L 35 ART 50 ART 100L macro, 24-70 L Mk2, 135L 200L 70-200L f4 ISHype chimping - The act of looking at your screen after every shot, then wildly behaving like it's the best picture in the world, to try and impress other photographers around you.

Thanks team speed. So what would you do? Soften her skin? I'm cincious any sharpening would accentuate her skin. Is it my original PP at fault, is she angling for a refund or just a picky woman? A friend has offered to help. Is it just that she doesn't like, the wrinkles? Her message to me doesn't exactly say what she feels is wrong.

I'd maybe take the clarity down a bit and soften skin some in LR but I wouldn't go too far. She seems like someone looking to complain. Whenever you get someone pressuring you for pics right away even though you've got an agreed upon deliver time it's a red flag.

By all means try and keep your clients happy but also know that some people are impossible to please. Don't let it crush your confidence, we've all been there.

Thanks DCNats. I needed to hear that. Was thinking of quitting. Well half thinking. The good thing is the advice has been CC and not saying my pics are awful. I've got a friend offering to edit a few her way and soften skin. Maybe a woman's eye is a good thing. Not going to spend ages on PP. Will offer to send two lots, one as I edited, the other what my friend does. I might just do a clarity drop in LR to 30 or 40. So has anyone had something similar happen in the past? How did you resolve things?

I'm not a commercial photographer or a user of sophisticated PP programs. Here are comments based only on being female and analytical.

It's common for one's body image to fall behind the actual appearance of one's body as aging occurs. Your bride may well think she looks 10 years younger than she does. I wouldn't tell her that, though. You can say the lighting was unflattering (it was, in the sample indoor shots). Your low angle may also have emphasized facial contours. This woman has prominent facial bones, which tend toward a masculine look because they're a testosterone effect. The way she smiled doesn't help.

Ask her whether the treatment of her face is the main thing bothering her. When you soften lines, her forehead needs attention. Below the neck: her waist isn't sharply indented in the frontal view (maybe it's the dress), and her upper arm has slack flesh or loose skin. I suppose these things are harder to fix. Wait for her to bring them up.

Colin Glover wrote in post #18385875I might just do a clarity drop in LR to 30 or 40.

In my experience, using an updated version of LR CC on pictures of people, clarity settings of over 10 is usually too much unless you are looking for that look.

I'd just take them all down to 6 or so and see what they look like. Based on what you are hearing I don't think the clarity slider is helping you here. I'd also be careful about how much sharpening you are using.

Those images have terrible jpeg artifacts and are over sharpened. They look terrible. I suspect the images will look better when you process them less. Don't do any sharpening, don't do any clarity, and check the output image quality before you distribute them. I do customer images at Q9 or Q10 3600px.

Don't do skin smoothing without it being requested. That's mildly offensive to the person. Don't even call it skin smoothing, call it "gentle processing" or something.

Tell them the photos haven't been shown well on the screen, and that you're sure they'll be happier when they see the images high resolution or printed. Also tell them you'll work with them to make sure they're happy.

I suggest you arrange a time to present the finished images to them, ideally in person, in a way you can view them together. I do a slide show on a 40" TV in my office. Using someone else's TV you can end up with things looking odd, you have to get resolution right. If you can't do a presentation on a TV you control make some prints - maybe 8x12" so they can see how they ok. If she thinks she looks old tell her you think she looks great (do NOT say "for her age"), and this is how the camera captured them. At that point you can offer the additional service of some mild processing (don't say skin smoothing) for some or all images. This is an additional service that you outsource, you would give them a quote on it.

Now I'm looking at this on my PC and not my phone, I have to agree with the above, they don't look very clean at all Extremely noisy, not sharp, something is seriously amiss. I think the 'back to RAW' advice is excellent advice....

( I'd crop out the boarded up building in the first pic, but the pic looks too noisy already so I don't think you'll get away with it ).

5DIII, 40D, 16-35L 35 ART 50 ART 100L macro, 24-70 L Mk2, 135L 200L 70-200L f4 ISHype chimping - The act of looking at your screen after every shot, then wildly behaving like it's the best picture in the world, to try and impress other photographers around you.

Great advice guys. To clear any confusion I'll point out a few things. 1). To ensure you saw as the bride saw them, I took them from the Facebook page I uploaded to. As you know, FB is not the ideal viewing platform. So that's why there are artifacts in the images. It was easy to just put up low resolution and pull down without resizing for POTN through LR. I did it on my phone for convenience. As with the clarity, I forgot the minus sign. So, what I'm in process of doing is....... Going back to my raws, clarity set to between -31 and -33, using a skin adjustment brush on the face and neck with sharpness reduced, nr at 30-35. Nothing overly drastic. No additional sharpening. Makes a big Difference. I'll post a couple of examples from my PC when I can, not FB. Oh Look!, You were right about the lighting. Terrible to deal with. Part of the walls had a tungsten cast on them. Hard to PP that. Modern cameras are great at resolving detail, too much in some cases. Thanks for the advice guys and girls.

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